'Path Lit by Lightning' showcases Jim Thorpe's resilience until the end of his life

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In the book Path Lit by Lightning, author David Maraniss does more than just write Jim Thorpe's life story. He delves into what caused misconceptions and false narratives about the great athlete, examines how exploitation of Native Americans by the U.S. government helped shape Thorpe's resilience, and offers a different perspective on the last few years of Thorpe's life as something admirable. In conversation with NPR's Don Gonyea, Maraniss explains these details and why they matter.

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's always weird to me when people get
0:08.3	propped up as symbols of something. Doing that has a tendency of squishing people down. It's a very
0:14.0	simplistic versions of themselves. But sometimes the arc of a person's life can really explain a
0:20.8	broader story. That's what today's book does.
0:23.4	It's a biography of the multi-talented mega athlete Jim Thorpe titled Pat Flit by Lightning
0:29.3	by journalist David Marinus. Now, Thorpe was a Native American born in 1887, and he was
0:35.5	undeniably one of the greats in sports history. But as David lays out in this
0:40.2	interview with NPR's Don Gagne, in order for Thorpe to get to that position, he had to endure
0:45.5	just some of the worst treatment every step of the way, dealing with absolutely awful people
0:51.0	trying to exploit him. And at the end of the day, it doesn't end great for Jim Thorpe the person.
0:57.5	But Jim Thorpe as a symbol or idea of indigenous perseverance and persistence still goes on today.
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1:25.6	app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:29.6	Jim Thorpe is one of those epic names in American lore, the greatest athlete ever, a Native American who overcame great odds to triumph in a number of sports, football, baseball, Olympic medals in track and field, lionized by Hollywood.
1:47.6	But his story is also one of exploitation and racism and one that's often been misunderstood or only told in part until now.
1:59.5	In a new book, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, David Marinus,
2:03.1	goes into great detail about the events and the myths that shape Jim Thorpe and his legacy.
2:11.3	It's called Path Lit by Lightning, the Life of Jim Thorpe. And it's the latest in a long line of celebrated biographies written by Marinus,
2:20.5	which include best-selling profiles of Barack Obama, baseball great Roberto Clemente,
	...

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